A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 20

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Polar bear ears are smaller than brown bear ears. This has more to do with an evolutionary rule than with hearing ability. What evolutionary rule is it?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER (mouseover to see):

Search [headless cockroach] and find that a cockroach will not die immediately from being beheaded and can live for several weeks before it eventually succumbs to starvation. Search [human without water] and find that, depending on conditions, the lifespan is between 3 and 14 days. Conclusion: you’ll lose your bet.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share." Follow @fitzwillie
and @wiredgeekdad
on Twitter.